Someone has observed that the it.wiki action could precipitate a similar de.wiki action over the imposition of an image filter. Now that would be interesting.

All it takes is one of the FKK admins on en.wp to smoke a bit more pot than usual and get the idea change the common.js page to protest something or other that the WMF has done. He'd be blocked and stripped pretty quickly, but then there would be an uproar and probably copycats.

Group: Contributors
Posts: 7,919
Joined: Sat 17th Feb 2007, 12:55am
From: My name it means nothing. My age it means less. The country I come from is called the Mid-West.
Member No.: 981

QUOTE(SB_Johnny @ Wed 5th October 2011, 5:16pm)

I'm probably just as surprised as you are about this, but the Italian wikipediots do seem to be doing real outreach, according to some of the newsfeed scrapes.

Could you point those out? I started to wade through the news pile but it was soon obvious that this would be no fun.

Of course the best evidence of Wikipedian cooperation would be articles/press releases from other entities saying so or listing them in with others in their coalition. Just saying "we work with them" doesn't even confirm that they know anything about it.

I'm probably just as surprised as you are about this, but the Italian wikipediots do seem to be doing real outreach, according to some of the newsfeed scrapes.

Could you point those out? I started to wade through the news pile but it was soon obvious that this would be no fun.

Of course the best evidence of Wikipedian cooperation would be articles/press releases from other entities saying so or listing them in with others in their coalition. Just saying "we work with them" doesn't even confirm that they know anything about it.

It's in one of the ones before early afternoon today (14:00 EDT or so) ... apparently they have a petition and some "off wiki" social media thing going. I read quite a few of them before giving up and herding all the little kitties into the one thread (and there's been very little else picked up today).

Group: Contributors
Posts: 7,919
Joined: Sat 17th Feb 2007, 12:55am
From: My name it means nothing. My age it means less. The country I come from is called the Mid-West.
Member No.: 981

QUOTE(SB_Johnny @ Wed 5th October 2011, 5:45pm)

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Wed 5th October 2011, 7:37pm)

QUOTE(SB_Johnny @ Wed 5th October 2011, 5:16pm)

I'm probably just as surprised as you are about this, but the Italian wikipediots do seem to be doing real outreach, according to some of the newsfeed scrapes.

Could you point those out? I started to wade through the news pile but it was soon obvious that this would be no fun.

Of course the best evidence of Wikipedian cooperation would be articles/press releases from other entities saying so or listing them in with others in their coalition. Just saying "we work with them" doesn't even confirm that they know anything about it.

It's in one of the ones before early afternoon today (14:00 EDT or so) ... apparently they have a petition and some "off wiki" social media thing going. I read quite a few of them before giving up and herding all the little kitties into the one thread (and there's been very little else picked up today).

Fun Fun. Fun. Are all these popups javascript or do make Flash look like js? Anyway this article referrers to this Facebook page but that is hardly cooperating with others. But I got lots more articles before 14:00 EDT.

This article says "Protesters gathered near parliament with their mouths taped shut" but make no connection between that protest and any Wikipedian.

This one has a two year old pic of Mr.Wales that could also be pressed into service for an article on Hank Williams Jr. raving that Obama is Hitler.

This article has a whopper: "Wikipedia has been around for a decade now, and the site says its own internal review board has properly handled such issues in the past and asserts that there’s no reason for a law to handle them"

And that all folks. Every news feed for whole day 12mn until now. No sign of working with others AFAIK.

I'm told that this was under discussion in the Italian community for months, and I trust that they are just as analytical and thorough as we are, so I don't think they got the law wrong, nor took the action lightly. However, they didn't let me know or the Foundation know or other communities know, so it wasn't possible to get them wider support and more "eyes on the problem" beforehand.

I think it's safe to say that, in the main, the advice the Foundation is getting is mainly from the Italian Wikipedia community. I think it's safe to say that, no, the Foundation is not well-informed on the matter, and that they received no advance warning. I consider that to be sub-optimal, obviously, but second-guessing the community in the midst of a breaking news story would send a really false signal.

Jimbo and the WMF apparently believes anything Wikipedians tell them without checking the facts or investigating.

Meanwhile, some Wikipedians are trying to figure out what's the law is about:

I'm unfamiliar with Italian law and the proposed law, so I won't comment on who's right or wrong, but I think it's safe to say that the Foundations is making a mistake by not doing some legal research before making statements and taking sides.

This post has been edited by Michaeldsuarez: Thu 6th October 2011, 2:42am

So, if I'm an Italian and I put a picture of Mussolini on Berlusconi's* Italian Wikipedia article, I personally have 48 hours to remove it. If that does not happen, I would be fined, but would all Italian Wikipedians be fined because they did not revert in time?

*Firefox says the spelling should be "Berliners." How disturbingly coincidental.

Group: Contributors
Posts: 7,919
Joined: Sat 17th Feb 2007, 12:55am
From: My name it means nothing. My age it means less. The country I come from is called the Mid-West.
Member No.: 981

QUOTE(The Joy @ Wed 5th October 2011, 9:53pm)

So, if I'm an Italian and I put a picture of Mussolini on Berlusconi's* Italian Wikipedia article, I personally have 48 hours to remove it. If that does not happen, I would be fined, but would all Italian Wikipedians be fined because they did not revert in time?

*Firefox says the spelling should be "Berliners." How disturbingly coincidental.

I don't speak Italian and I'm not going to look at the relevant statutes but my guess is a take down notice is sent. If you comply it is over. If not then you can be prosecuted. I'm pretty sure Italy is still far enough in rule-of-law camp that that means you can defend with lawyer judges hearings witnesses etc at that point. I don't know what the elements of the offense are or what defenses are available. But I'm pretty sure the Wikipedians are not accurately representing it. Democracies generally don't even have the machinery needed to collect extra judicial "fines."

I'm unfamiliar with Italian law and the proposed law, so I won't comment on who's right or wrong, but I think it's safe to say that the Foundations is making a mistake by not doing some legal research before making statements and taking sides.

Note that this page is signed "The users of Wikipedia", as if there were unanimity or at least "consensus" among the users. As someone with hundreds of edits on the Italian site, I can reasonably consider myself one of those users. Yet I was not consulted. For that matter, there must be thousands, maybe millions, of people who consult the site without editing it. Are they not users? Guess how many of them were consulted.

Group: Contributors
Posts: 7,919
Joined: Sat 17th Feb 2007, 12:55am
From: My name it means nothing. My age it means less. The country I come from is called the Mid-West.
Member No.: 981

QUOTE(SB_Johnny @ Thu 6th October 2011, 12:13pm)

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Thu 6th October 2011, 11:13am)

QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Thu 6th October 2011, 9:06am)

Expect the Wikipedioids to take all the credit for whatever changes are made to the bill.

...and to bail if the rights of any non-Wikipedians are impaired.

...and for the WMF to bail even quicker if any of their "editors" actually gets sued.

If I understand what happened (hard with language barrier and all):

WMF and en.wikipedia softened their initial support for the shut down (Wales: "not well informed")

The shutdown was not as universally accepted, even on it.wikipedia, as represented.

The "shut-her-downers" overstated some aspects of the proposed law.

Either the "shut-her-downers" corrected their misunderstand/exaggerations or the Italian lawmaker clarified the proposed law to apply to only newspaper owned or similar sites, not blogs social media etc.

The "shut-her-downers" abandoned their efforts, retaining only some click through information about the matter.

So once the world was free for WoW and Transformer articles the "shut-her-downers" turned out to be not so interested in free speech after all. Of course newspapers, already undermined by Wikipedia and social media, are a much more socially important protector from anti-democratic forces. They seem to be on their own as far WP and FKK is concerned.

So once the world was free for WoW and Transformer articles the "shut-her-downers" turned out to be not so interested in free speech after all. Of course newspapers, already undermined by Wikipedia and social media, are a much more socially important protector from anti-democratic forces. They seem to be on their own as far WP and FKK is concerned.

It's actually rather interesting (to me) that the "traditional" media tends to always say nice fluffy things about WP and the WMF, when they either don't give a crap about and/or are actively hostile to the "traditional" media unless they're pawns in some sort of argument about how best to (mis)represent the topic of a given article they want to spin.

I think the majority of the FKK crowd can usually be forgiven under the "they know not what they do" clause, but the knee-jerk support and passive-aggressive backing off by the WMF was done by people who should damn well know better.

Of course they bailed. If not what are they doing to protect the free speech rights of the newspapers and the other sites still on the line? Also thanks for earlier posting the same link without elaboration or translation. You know the whole "blackout" was juvenile and petulant, right? How would more of that help anyone?